


i still want it all

by Nina_683



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Light Angst, M/M, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 07:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15702864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina_683/pseuds/Nina_683
Summary: Hyunjin imagines that after 17 years of friendship, him and Changbin are meant to be together.It's so simple, a plot from the movies. Childhood friends falling in love. Except-Lee Felix was never meant to be part of the equation.





	i still want it all

He can see them, just outside the window, holding hands and leaning into each other in the sun of the courtyard. They make a striking image, he concedes, Felix’s bright hair blazing next to Changbin’s darker tones- but he looks better with him.

Changbin had never looked at him like that, but he’d thought it wasn’t a problem with himself. It was a Changbin thing, that he’d liked him in his own, safe way-

But the way he looked at Felix was not safe at all.

“Hyunjin?”

His head twists around too fast, before he thinks to compose himself.

“Are you alright?” The counselor asks, pen tapping against the plastic of the her clipboard.

“I have a… stomach-ache.” He lies hurriedly, standing up from his chair. “I’d like to leave this session early.” He picks up his coat and bag as he talks, crossing the room in large strides.

“We’ll pick up this session again when you feel better then, alright?” She states, uncrossing her legs.

Hyunjin doesn’t answer, the door swinging behind him as he goes.

#

“Is there someone you like?” Jeongin asks, head on Hyunjin’s stomach as he flips through the latest issue of his manga series. 

He knows that Jeongin only asks because he’s just poured his own heart out about Kim Seungmin, and is expecting something in return- but all the same a heavy cloud coils around his gut as he sits up.

"Me?" Hyunjin smiles, his old defenses running back full steam, "Oh, no, I--”

He stops.

What’s the point? What’s the point in this sick charade of normality, acting like nothing has changed, like he doesn’t want to rip his heart out and stomp on the stupid thing every time he sees Changbin.

"Yes," he answers, voice edged with knives, "More than you could ever imagine. It's awful. I hate it more than I’ve hated anything else- and I hate him too.”

There is a moment of silence, before Jeongin returns back flipping his manga. “I wish I could be that passionate about something.” He comments idly, and Hyunjin suddenly realises that he has an advantage over Felix in a way he’d never considered.

He has that passion, born from the torch he's been holding for almost all his life.

Changbin has never found him attractive like everyone else does- or at least has never expressed anything about his looks anyway, so that's a bust. But it's fine, because Hyunjin has spent nearly every waking morning and night with this boy since he was born, and he knows his ins and outs like the back of his hand.

He can do this. 

"Valentine's Day is coming up," Jeongin comments, closing his manga, "you doing anything?" He raises his eyebrows, and Hyunjin smiles at the silent suggestion.

"Actually, yeah. I am."

Jeongin grins and quietly squeezes his wrist as he puts the manga away, a small expression of reassurance.

#

_"That's a nice bracelet," he'd said offhandedly, and Hyunjin had put it in a drawer and never worn it again._

#

He takes Jeongin’s advice, and on Valentine’s day the next week, he sets out to make confession chocolates for Changbin.

He makes three batches of chocolate and they all turn out horrible. He feeds them to his cat, and then splurges the remainders of his money on boxes of chocolate waiting to be rejected.

His mother catches him before he can hide them away in his room, and sighs. "Oh, Hyunjin."

"What," Hyunjin defends, "It's almost Valentine's day, you know? I'll need a lot."

"It's not the boy, you're just in love with misery," his mother says, "It runs in the family, you know."

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, ripping the price tags off the chocolates. It didn’t matter, Changbin would know he didn't make them himself. The two of them were equally bad at all things culinary-related, and usually attempted Valentine chocolates together, laughing at their failed attempts and throwing flour at each other when they got bored.

He’d cancelled this year, said he wanted to make them himself.

Changbin hadn’t seemed too bothered, he’d nodded absently and gone off to talk to Felix, and Hyunjin sat at his seat, digging his nails into his palm so hard he could feel the half-moon indents rising.

"That boy you like," his mother looks at him frankly, "What would you do if he accepted your chocolates? What then?"

"Then I'd ask him out," Hyunjin rolls his eyes, but with his back turned so that his mother doesn’t see, "It's not that complicated. But I guess it doesn't matter, anyways," he stops, then takes a breath, "He isn't going to say yes."

#

_He works hard to get a seat next to Changbin on their school trip, bribing Jisung to swap seats with him. They play Uno for 3 hours, till Changbin falls asleep amid the laughing and jostling and rests his head on Hyunjin’s shoulder, content._

_Hyunjin doesn’t move for the rest of the journey, too scared to escape the moment._

_He’s known the boy since they were born, he’s seen him naked, slept in the same bed and seen him at his worst- but somehow this feels more intimate than anything else that’s happened between them._

_He takes a picture of the scene, and treasures it like nothing else._

_At least until he spots Felix and Changbin doing the same thing on the next school trip, and suddenly that crinkled photo lovingly stored on his bedside drawer is meaningless. He goes home and rips it up into tiny pieces until he gets papercuts, vacuuming the remains until not a single trace is left of its existence._

#

He waits until the end of classes, and presents the chocolates to Changbin on a sun-covered stairwell. The sweets are packed in heart-shaped boxes- there is no mistaking the intention behind them.

Changbin’s eyes widen, and Hyunjin’s stomach already begins to tighten as Changbin bows at the waist. “I can’t accept these, I’m sorry.” He declines, polite and the most formal he’s ever been to Hyunjin.

He tucks the boxes under his arm and waits for the other boy to straighten. 

“As expected," Hyunjin smiles tightly. 

Changbin has the grace to look guilty, rubbing the back of his neck. “Thank you for making them for me though, you’ve really improved.”

“I haven’t. I tried to make them and they were awful, and now my cat needs its stomach pumped.”

Changbin snorts in amusement, but quickly covers his grin with his hand. “Sorry.”

Hyunjin waves it off. “It’s fine. He abruptly rips at the cardboard corner, tongue between his teeth. "I understand that you've rejected me, but do you want one? I can't eat all of this myself."

Changbin eyes the chocolate dubiously, "I don't...think that would be right. I'm sorry. Thank you, again."

This is the most awkward it’s ever been between them, and Hyunjin’s fingers itch with the urge to throw the boxes in the air and claim it as a joke, that he didn’t really mean it and it was all a prank. Changbin would sigh in relief and sling his arm around his shoulders, and everything would go back to normal.

He hates himself for even considering it.

"Oh, I see," Hyunjin turns, "Guess I should be going."

#

There’s a carton of milk sitting in the refrigerator at home. Without knowing why, he opens it, and pours the whole thing down the sink. He smashes the eggs, shreds the parsley, wads slices of bread into moist, doughy balls, and he keeps at it until the pipes back up, crying all the while.

#

Felix finds him a day later, sitting by the back of the school.

He plops down next to him without invitation, and brings a juice box out his bag.

They sit in silence for a while, before Felix tentatively asks, “Hyunjin?”

"What?"

Felix rocks back into the wall, lips bending the straw of his juice box flat, "Why do you like Changbin?"

"Why? What do you mean why? There is no why. I just do."

He stares at Hyunjin earnestly, "Oh... just like in the movies!"

Hyunjin inhales sharply, feeling himself lock down. "Don't say that!" He snaps. "Don't you dare laugh! It's not like that at all! If this were a movie, he wouldn’t have… he wouldn’t have rejected me! I’ve been with him so long and then you showed up and...!" He draws his arm sharply across his eyes, and tries to glare Felix into submission. 

Felix stares back, startled. 

Slowly, Hyunjin slides back down the wall, letting his legs splay carelessly before him. He looks straight ahead.

"I like Changbin very much," Felix begins, his voice small, "I want...I want to know everything about him. Even the bad things. I'm...I'm a little bit jealous. I wish I could have as many memories of him as you do."

Hyunjin pulls his legs up, and buries his face between his knees. After a moment, Felix touches his shoulder.

"Are you crying?"

"Don't be stupid."

#

He comes home to find his mother in his room, systematically turning through Hyunjin’s old photo albums, dissecting them. His stomach clenches. "What're you doing?"

His mother pulled out a picture of his middle school's baseball team, and slid her finger across the row of boyish faces. Hyunjin stands straight in the doorway, pulled tight as a bow string, vibrating with tension. 

He bites his lip, and holds in his air, as though the pressure in his chest would be enough to make his mother leave.

"It’s Changbin, isn't it?" His mother asks, tracing the boy’s smiling outline in the picture.. 

Hyunjin says nothing, only follows his mother's movements with his eyes. His mother sighs, and looks down.

“I always knew, you know, even when you were children. You looked at him like I used to look at your father- like he hung the stars and the moon, just for you.”

She puts the photo back in the stack, and goes back to the albums. It was like she was trying to erase Changbin. Hyunjin’s shoulder loosens, and he lets his bag drop to the floor.

"Stop it."

"You can hate me," his mother says, not looking up, "That's the problem. I don't mind. I can't--I can't let that happen to you. I can't let you become me."

Another picture joins the stack. 

Hyunjin forces a laugh. "You're being silly. It's just high school. He's just a boy."

He hides his lying tongue behind his teeth, and smiles. Gently, he bends to tug the photo album away from his mother, only to have her grab his wrist.

"No," his mother says, the dreamy sadness falling away from her voice as she says the word, "Not this one."

<

#

He walks to school the next day in a daze, barely remembering to stop at the light, almost charging out on the road in his haze.

“Mister?”

He looks down.

"Here," a flower passes hands, and a child with a sticky smile and braids and her mother's eyes helps Hyunjin weave the flower into his hair, "Oh, it looks good on you. You're so handsome!."

Hyunjin stands numbly, and only remembers to move after the light has changed back again, so he has to wait even longer.

He pulls the flower out of his hair.

_Not handsome enough, though._

#

"I heard that you and Felix are going out."

Changbin tugs on the ends of his bangs, bending over the plans they were making, outlining the next field trip. "I guess."

So, no more boxes of chocolate he'd have to eat himself. He isn’t sure if he’s relieved, or heartbroken. Hyunjin draws an almost-perfect heart in the margin of his page, then covers it up with his arm.

This is when he’s supposed to give his blessing. Be a graceful loser.

He looks up at him through his eyelashes, "Hey, Changbin?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think I'm handsome?"

"I, uh..." Changbin trails off, looking at him in bewilderment. But then something shifts, and his eyes widen a little, and Hyunjin’s heart beats a little faster. "I guess I never really looked."

Hyunjin nods dizzily, lips curling up in a bitter smile. “That’s fine.”

#

He stoops to lift his bag on the way out.

It’s heavy with love letters.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is terrible but I really wanted to write something mildly Changjin so I guess here it is.
> 
> I originally put in more scenes with Hyunjin and Felix but in the end decided they didn't match the overall theme of the story and took them out. But I headcanon them all going to uni together and all three starting a relationship together.


End file.
